Band of the Week: honeyhoney

BAND OF THE WEEK: honeyhoneyHometown: Los Angeles, Calif.Fun Fact:composed music for Nickelodeonand various cartoon shows. Meanwhile,
Santo paid the bills as an actress, landing supporting roles in Law
& Order, Blind Justice and the Sigourney Weaverfilm
Imaginary Heroes.Why It's Worth Watching:
Alternately rustic-retro and cool-contemporary, honeyhoney’s First
Rodeo displays the common pop thread between alt.country,
spaghetti western soundtracks and swampy blues.For Fans Of:She & Him,
Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood, Jessie BaylinThree days after the release of
honeyhoney’s debut, bandmates Suzanne Santo and Ben Jaffe are on
opposite coasts. Santo is spending the weekend in Atlanta, where her
boyfriend has landed a job on the set of Road Trip 2.
Meanwhile, Jaffe putters around the kitchen in Los Angeles, having
chosen to stay home and enjoy the lingering warm weather. As his
bandmate talks about the opulence of her hotel (“This is where they
had the Gone with the Wind premiere!”) and the left-leaning
population of Atlanta (“Everybody here seems ready to kick it with
our main man, Obama.”), Jaffe valiantly offers up his own
interesting tidbits.BAND OF THE WEEK: honeyhoney“Hey, did you hear something sizzle?”
he asks, halting a tangent about the superiority of Road Trip
over Euro Trip. “I’m cooking bacon.”Maintaining a three-way phone
conversation with the members of honeyhoney is no easy task. They
talk quickly and spiritedly, bounding between topics with the same
genre-hopping energy that fuels their debut album, First Rodeo.
Ever the gracious frontwoman, Santo often declines to answer a
question first, yielding the spotlight to her musical cohort instead.It’s this mix of affability and
quick-witted energy that makes First Rodeolabel jointly owned by Jude Cole and actor Kiefer Sutherland, the
album takes its cues from Appalachian folk, country ballads, jazz and
Quentin Tarantino films. Completing the hybrid is Santo’s voice, a
throaty alto that’s equally capable of helming boozy torch songs
and stomping, neo-honky tonk.While Jaffe and Santo write all of
their own material, they nevertheless credit the Ironworks staff for
helping shape First Rodeo’s sound. “My family owns an
Italian restaurant that my grandparents started,” Santo explains,
“so my dad, uncles and cousins all work together. I kinda get that
same vibe with Ironworks. We’re all trying to make this special
‘rock pasta.’ Occasionally we’ll disagree on the ingredients,
but we’ll work it out and tweak the recipe.”Given the bandmates’ resume (and
proximity to Sutherland), it’s no surprise that film also informs
honeyhoney’s work. “Little Toy Gun,” a brazen nugget of
‘60s-styled pop in the vein of Nancy Sinatra, was inspired by the
Kill Bill soundtrack. Santo also took influence from
Tarantino’s movie, having chosen to model her performance in the
“Little Toy Gun” music video—a Western spoof that sees Santo
fleeing from a vengeful, card-dealing Sutherland—after Uma
Thurman’s character.“I was so nervous about staring down
Kiefer,” she says, “and I wanted something that was going to make
me feel like a bandit. So I just kept watching Kill Bill.”“Most of the time,” Jaffe
summarizes, “I try to write songs for a visual standpoint. I love
movies. I like songs to really evoke that same stuff; I want a song’s
imagery to make a movie in your head. The music should be the score.”Download honeyhoney's "Slow Brains" here.